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Tag: Drew Brees

  • Seattle Seahawks Inch Closer to the Super Bowl

    Saturday’s NFC Division Round game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New Orleans Saints seemed over. Marshawn Lynch was in true “beast mode” when he rushed for his second touchdown of the game and put the Seahawks up 23-8 late in the fourth. The stalwart Seattle D and the notorious “12th Man” rendered Drew Brees’ usually prolific offense nearly useless. Then the Saints found some rhythm, seemingly out of nowhere.

    Down by two scores, Brees went into a hurry-up offense that finally cracked the shiny veneer of the Seattle defense. The quarterback marched his team down the field and completed a tidy 80-yard touchdown drive, narrowing the Seahawk lead to 23-15. Then it was time to pull out an on-side kick, a desperation play, which rarely works especially when teams are expecting it. But wouldn’t you know, the hands team of Seattle couldn’t handle the squibber and Marques Colston recovered. The Saints would have one last chance.

    For a second, there seemed to be a hush on the usually raucous crowd. Could the Saints pull off a Colts-like miracle comeback?

    Brees has precious seconds to spare. He completes a short pass to Colston. Then for some reason, when the wide receiver catches the ball around midfield with seconds to play, he does not step out of bounds to stop the clock in order to have one last Hail Mary play to the end zone. Colston instead attempts to lateral a pass to Travis Cadet, but it’s a forward lateral. Ten-second penalty, game over.

    Head coach Pete Carroll has built one of the best defenses in the game. Even though quarterback Russell Wilson was held to a paltry 18 attempts for 103 yards with no touchdowns, Seattle still won the game, rather easily. Marshawn Lynch was once again truly a beast, running 140 yards on 28 carries. Carroll spoke of the importance of Lynch to the team. “He battles every week, and when you give him a chance, he makes plays. He’s had a consistent run for us — I saw a stat the other day that it was three straight 1,000-yard years with 10-plus touchdowns. You have to love his last touchdown run — it was a cool way to end that game and give us the chance and the score we needed to put them away.”

    Seattle will meet up with NFC division rival San Francisco next Sunday in the NFC Championship Game. Seattle will once again try to rally behind the best home field advantage in sports. The winner of that game will earn the right to go to the Super Bowl on February 2nd in New Jersey.

    Image via Facebook

  • New Orleans Saints Find Swagger; Lead NFC South

    Last week in Seattle, the New Orleans Saints faced one of the most humiliating nights a perennially successful football team can face, losing to the Seattle Seahawks 34-7 and looking abysmal the entire time. However, in typical Saints fashion, New Orleans was able to bounce-back from a night of adversity to defeat the Carolina Panthers Sunday night by a score of 31-13, giving the Saints the NFC South lead and also cementing several records along the way.

    The game started sluggishly for the now 10-3 Saints, with the Panthers coming out of the gates fast and scoring 2 field goals in the first quarter while possessing the ball for a total of 11 minutes and 30 seconds. By the time the second quarter rolled around, though, the Saints had found their footing. In the second quarter alone, the Saints scored 3 touchdowns, with Brees completing 14 of 16 passes for 159 yards total.

    The performance by Brees and the Saints is all the more impressive when one considers the fact that the Panthers rank 2nd in overall defensive statistics in the NFL, ranking 5th in passing defense and 1st in running defense individually, and 1st in scoring defense, allowing only 13.1 points-per-game.

    Cam Newton, who had led the Panthers to 8 consecutive victories during his second year in the NFL, voiced his obvious disappointment toward Carolina’s performance: “I felt as if those guys just were better than us today. Are they better than us? No. But today, it showed the name of the game is scoring more points than the other team. Those guys did, and we just got the short end of the stick.”

    While Newton and the Panthers lamented their paltry offensive performance, the Saints were relishing the fact that their defense had finally gotten its act back together: “To go out and play the way we did today, we got our confidence back and kind of got our swagger back. And that’s Saints football, what you saw out there today. I don’t know what that was last week,” stated Saints linebacker Curtis Lofton.

    Many NFL fans and analysts have questioned the success of the Saints this year. Their second-place passing ranking displays the fact that their offense can compete at a high level, but many have questioned whether their defense is up to par, especially when on the road. This season, the Saints are 10-0 at home, but suffer when playing on the road, boasting an even record of 3-3.

    If the Saints’s defense can’t cut it, it will be up to quarterback Drew Brees to push the New Orleans team to victory. This game against the Panthers marked several career records for Brees, now in his 13th NFL season. During Sunday’s game, Brees became the first quarterback in the history of the NFL to throw for 4,000 yards in 8 or more consecutive seasons, along with becoming the first to pass for 30 TD’s in 6 or more consecutive seasons. Brees also became the quickest quarterback to surpass the 50,000 career yard mark, beating Peyton Manning by 8 games.

    The New Orleans Saints currently lead the NFC South by 1 game over the Carolina Panthers. The Panthers have a chance to even the season series when the Saints go to Charlotte on December 22. Even if the Panthers win the rematch, however, the Saints can clinch the No. 2 seed in the NFC by winning two of their last three games.

    [Image via YouTube]

  • New Orleans Saints Back in Business?

    It was a loud night in the Mercedes Benz Superdome. After dealing the Miami Dolphins a night of destruction, clenching a 38-17 victory, the Saints are beginning to turn heads and raise questions of optimism. Since their first three contenders weren’t ranked statistically satisfactory on the overall depth charts, Monday night’s win put a different spin on things.

    The Saints and Dolphins both entered Monday night’s game with a 3-0 undefeated record. Topping the AFC East standings in conjunction with the Patriots, the Dolphins were a highly anticipated competitor for the Saints. The game was expected to serve as a tell-tale sign as to whether both teams have just gotten lucky so far, or whether their the real deal. The game could have served as the first challenging road block for the Saints, however, the script was flipped on the Dolphins instead.

    With head coach Sean Payton’s return since his season-long suspension last year, the spirit of Saints football has definitely been brought back to life. However, last night proved that the Saints may really be back.

    The Saints’ offense took reign in last night’s game boasting a line of veteran players with seven years of continuity. Quarterback Drew Brees, RB Pierre Thomas, and WR Marques Colston were all apart of the winning dynamic for the 2010 Super Bowl Saints, and it looks as though they’re playing with that same tenacity. But, this time around, they’ve brought TE Jimmy Graham, and RB Darren Sproles into the equation, which only adds fuel to the fire. With a glint of that same potential championship winning dynamic, Graham and Sproles carried a lot of weight during the first four games.

    Last night, Graham who was locked down by two defenders during the majority of the game, still managed to complete two catches for a total of 73 yards. Both pass completions resulted in touchdowns. Brees also had an impressive night, executing that pass precision he’s been lauded for. With a mere 39 pass attempts, Brees managed to accumulate 413 yards and four touchdowns, reported ESPN NFL Nation.

    The Saints’ offensive execution was no surprise, as their performance was more-less expected. However, the awe-factor came from the Saints’ defense. Saints DE standouts, Cameron Jordan and Junior Galette lead the defense, making great strides in holding down Miami’s offense throughout the course of the entire game.

    With the tenacity displayed last night, the Saints definitely have the look of a well-developed group worthy of playoff potential, with the possibly of becoming a Super Bowl contender. However, only time will tell as the season progresses. Their upcoming battles between the No. 9 Chicago Bears (3-1) and the No. 4 New England Patriots (4-0) will surely paint the picture.
    Image via Twitter | New Orleans Saints

  • New Orleans Saints Players Promote Local Newspaper With Pay-Per-Tweets

    What are your thoughts on sponsored tweets? Do you ignore them or interact with them? Would you trust a sponsored tweet if it was issued by a sports entity you liked/admired/idolized? Of course, the concept of Promoted Tweets has been a part of the Twitter experience since spring of this year, as the social media behemoth tries to monetize all that content.

    But what about promotions that aren’t included with Twitter’s advertising aspect? Would you trust them if they came from somebody in the public eye? In New Orleans, the Times-Picayune is trying its hand at promoting its website, NOLA.com, with a little help from perhaps the most popular aspect of New Orleans, players from the New Orleans Saints, which begs a question or two:

    Would you visit NOLA.com if Drew Brees asked you to? Even if it was through his Twitter account? What about if are getting paid to do so?

    That’s what the newspaper is banking on, and while Brees is the most popular of the Saints players to take part in the promotion, he’s by no means the only Saints player to do so. From the article in question:

    Under a contract with Advance Digital, players Drew Brees, Lance Moore, Tracy Porter, Pierre Thomas and Jonathan Vilma each tweeted praise for the newly redesigned Saints community on NOLA.com this month and included a link to the site, urging their Twitter subscribers to check it out.

    So if one of these popped up on your Twitter stream, would you even want to visit the site being promoted or would you bypass it for more tweet reading? Here’s an example of these posts, taken from Brees’ Twitter account:

    @drewbrees
    Drew Brees    Hey, Who Dat nation! Get the latest #Saints news at http://t.co/n0E8OZxK: http://t.co/9izeQIA6 #endorser 8 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @drewbrees
    Drew Brees    Who Dats! If you didn’t join the NOLA Saints community this morning at http://taps/oYlykS join now! #spon 7 days ago via Twitter for Android · powered by @socialditto

    Notice the “#endorser” and the “#spon” hashtags? Of course, that’s not the same as Twitter’s official “Sponsored Tweet” logo, but it serves the same purpose. Are these tweets a conflict of interest, considering just how much coverage the team receives at NOLA.com? Another question comes to mind when looking over these sponsored tweets: Why haven’t more newspapers gone this route, especially if there’s a local team that has a rabid fan following?

    Drew Brees has almost 700,000 followers, and if his sponsored tweets get a one percent clickthrough rate, that’s still 7000 additional visitors NOLA.com potentially receives. I’m not sure there are any newspapers out there that would turn down an additional 7000 visitors on a day-to-day basis.

    H/t to The Big Lead for pointing this out.